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Manhattan Day Trip to the Nation’s Start

Time travel on the A line: the Morris-Jumel Mansion (1765).Credit
Linda Rosier for The New York Times

“Forty Part Motet,” Janet Cardiff’s moving sound installation, might have been one of the most popular draws north of the Museum Mile this fall, but the Cloisters, where the show ended last weekend, is not the only stellar attraction in Upper Manhattan. There are three often-overlooked historic homes there where you can stretch your legs and your imagination for a high-flying ride through war, sex scandals and a shooting from over two centuries ago.

The Hamilton Grange, the Morris-Jumel Mansion and the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum, all situated along the narrow spine of Upper Manhattan, string together tales of early American striving — and lethal squabbling — to rival any historical blockbuster. They are connected by Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and George Washington, as well as the Revolutionary War and the early years of the Republic.

With a reasonably early start, a weekend day is enough to visit all three — for about $6 total in admission plus fare for the A train, to keep it simple.

Imagine salutary breezes whispering over long vistas and up bluffs of sparkling schist, and the three houses basking on their high perches. From his military headquarters at the Morris-Jumel house, Washington could have surveyed Harlem Heights, where he gained a rare early victory in the war. Hamilton, from the new home he built near that hill some decades later, could have seen the Morris-Jumel Mansion, where he may have first become acquainted with his mentor Washington and his nemesis Burr. And Burr, after marrying the widow Eliza Jumel several decades later, could have looked out from his bedroom window at the dream home of the man he had killed in a duel.

That dream home, the 1802 Hamilton Grange, is a good place to start. Take the A train to 145th Street and head uphill. Turn left on Convent Avenue, and after three blocks reminiscent of Old Amsterdam, cross 141st Street and turn left. The gray wall you are walking next to serendipitously serves to set up the sudden reveal of the Grange, an improbable island of country solace in Harlem.

The National Park Service runs the restored Grange, a National Memorial, and ranger-led tours of this undervisited gem are available. Hamilton’s central role in establishing such headline fodder as our national debt, the Federal Reserve and centralized government is on display.

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The Dyckman Farmhouse (1784).Credit
Linda Rosier for The New York Times

The bright paint and huge, triple-hung windows elaborate on the lightness of the Federal style, and even hint at Hamilton’s childhood in the West Indies, of a cottage soaked with sun and cooled by trade winds. Your guide may mention the wine cooler: It is a reproduction, but the original was given to Hamilton by Washington as a token of his friendship after Hamilton was forced to admit his affair with a woman named Maria Reynolds — quite possibly the first (though certainly not the last) public confession about private behavior by a prominent American politician. After the scandal, Mrs. Reynolds secured a divorce from her husband, using Burr as her attorney.

Retrace your steps to the 145th Street station and board the C train on the same platform. At the 163rd Street station, exit at 161st and St. Nicholas. Look for stairs set in a small stone wall just past the C-Town supermarket in front of you. Climb these and you’re at the end of the cobblestoned Sylvan Terrace. At the top of this block is the oldest house in Manhattan, the Morris-Jumel Mansion.

Built by the Englishman Roger Morris in 1765 as a summer retreat, this Georgian-style mansion was well situated to serve as temporary headquarters for General Washington. The first impression, however, is of the lavish use of gilt compared with Hamilton’s home. Eliza Jumel, who with her husband, Stephen, a French wine merchant, bought the house in 1810, embraced French Empire décor and had two large sets of golden wings hung in the hall, one that she claimed was from the court of Napoleon Bonaparte. Several rooms are decorated in the lighter Early American and Georgian styles to reflect the previous uses of the house.

Mrs. Jumel, like Hamilton, had been born of an illegitimate union and came to New York to seek her fortune. She was a self-made woman who lived to be 92. “While she never failed to make continual conquests,” reads her obituary in The New York Times, “we are not of those who believe the slanderers of her reputation. Gaiety is not always guilt, frivolity not always the exponent of heartlessness.”

Fourteen months after Stephen Jumel’s accidental death, she married Burr in the front parlor in 1833, when he was 77. She was reported to be the wealthiest woman in the United States, but the union was short-lived. She is said to have had Alexander Hamilton Jr. serve Burr with divorce papers.

As you leave the mansion, you are already on land that once belonged to the Dyckman family, the builders of the last house on this A-train trail. Return to St. Nicholas and walk or take the train to 168th Street for the uptown A, riding it to 207th Street. Walk south on Broadway to 204th Street. Here you’ll find the Dyckman Farmhouse. The prim white house was built here in 1784.

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Hamilton Grange (1802).Credit
Linda Rosier for The New York Times

The original portrait in the parlor is of Jacob Dyckman, a grandson of the builder and a graduate of Columbia College. David Hosack, to whom Dyckman dedicated his dissertation, was present at the Hamilton-Burr duel, and attended Hamilton as he was dying.

It is easy to imagine that these farmers were tough, salt-of-the-earth types compared with the high-strung movers and shakers who made the previous homes. The original floors of the house are wide planks of American chestnut, now virtually extinct as a lumber tree.

If you still have a little time before dark, return to the train, board at the back and get off at the 181st Street stop. Take the 185th Street exit and the elevator to your right. Bennett Park is across the street, the former site of Fort Washington. In the park, the highest point in Manhattan (265.05 feet) is marked on a chunk of schist. Washington reportedly watched the battle that lost the Continental fort from its twin, Fort Lee, just over the Hudson in New Jersey.

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Finish your outing with a stroll down Fort Washington Avenue to 181st Street. Turn right and go about a block, and see his imposing namesake bridge spanning that distance. You can take the A train at 181st back downtown.